Dino-Mike and the T. Rex Attack for Timeslip Tuesday

If you have a six to eight year old who loves dinosaurs and is reading at the Early Chapter Book level of large font and generous spacing and who really thinks it would be cool to have a Dino Jacket full of dino special effects and neat gadgets, by all means try Dino-Mike and the T. Rex Attack (Stone Arch Books, March 2015) , written and illustrated by Franco. It's the first in a series of dino-filled adventures staring Mike, who has just such a jacket, and who meets lots of dinosaurs over the course of his adventures.

For reasons never made convincing (in this first book at least), some people think they should bring back the dinosaurs, using time travel to do so, resulting in a rouge T. Rex rampaging around the dig where Mike is hanging with his paleontologist dad.  For reasons that do not require explanation, there are other people working to stop the dinosaur lovers, and in this case a oprative named Shannon, a girl a bit older than Mike, has been given the task of capturing the T. Rex.  

T Rexs are hard to capture, especially so if there's an enemy agent working against you.  Mike and Shannon have lots of close calls and there are lots of exciting dinosaur chases (some dinosaur chasing kid, some kid chasing dinosaur).  The time travel part, though not explored in great detail, added interest, and leaves lots of room for further books.  Generously sprinkled illustrations of big eyed kids (and big toothed T. Rex)  add to the young-reader friendly-ness of the mix.

This book, however, made a mistake that annoys me no end. A paleontological excavation for fossils is not an "archaeological dig" and Mike's dad had no business saying so.

There are other books about Dino-Mike, one of which, Dino-Mike and the Jurassic Portal, sounds more time-travel focused than The T. Rex attack, which serves more as an introduction to the scenario, and so I will probably look out for it, though I'm not sure I feel the need to read all eight books in the series (six currently out, plus two more coming August 1, 2016)
 
So if you are the target audience, enjoy them!  I'm not, but still they seem to me the sort of books that are a good gateway to a life of geeky spec fic reading....